Ferenc is present, and so we must be circumspect. He stays two nights at Csejte before going before Rudolph to discuss the war. I have instructed him to gain access to the Emperor’s library, as by all accounts Rudolph has collected texts which may throw light on our studies, and which may give me an advantage over the Dragon should he ever return to trouble me. Ferenc can barely write his name, the oaf, and I fear any requests I make will be lost in the hollow of his skull. Save when he comes to my bed and thrusts upon me, he is nothing to me, but then I could not abide an attentive husband who might notice things.
13th February 1592
Dorottya believes she has improved her incantations, so we shall attempt a major bath with warm, rather than cold-preserved.
Materiel: 7
Hungarian, age 14, fair
Hungarian, age 15, fair
Jewess, age 15, dark
Slovak, age 15, fair
Hungarian, age 17, dark, blemish on left cheek
Serb, age 17, fair
Hungarian, age 21, fair.
Results: greatly improved success, all agree that I look some years younger, 25 perhaps, or even 20. Change persists after rising.
15th February 1592
My face in the mirror shows the burden of years. The blood washes off me. The materiel was imperfect or insufficient. Have sent Ilona and Fickó to recruit more subjects. I feel him out there. Time is a river that bears me off while he just waits on the shore.
Letter from the staff of Ferenc Nádasdy, Prague, to György Thurzó, Trnava, 1593
György, from your fellow soldier Ferenc
Never have I had greater joy than today. The Emperor has at last given me leave to reclaim our abused Hungary from beneath the Crescent.
I will meet you at the muster outside Trnava and we shall embrace, and then we shall fall upon the Turk like tigers. Rather the armies of the Porte than to be home any longer than I must, and be with Her.
Your comrade
Ferenc
Dictated this 29th day of July in this year 1593
Letter from György Thurzó, Esztergom, to Prince Matthias of Habsburg, Governor of Austria, Vienna, 1595
My right worthy and worshipful Prince, I recommend myself, your humble servant, into your good graces.
Messengers will already have outstripped my words to tell you that we have taken the town, but that General Von Mansfeld’s wounds were mortal and he has followed after the many men he led into the breach, leaving the army under my command and that of Ferenc Nádasdy.
Your Highness, as you know, I have on occasion conducted investigations for your Imperial brother Rudolph to further his interest in matters unusual and arcane, and so consider myself something of a familiar of the mysterious. The matters I write of have a touch of darkness about them, but I must make plain I do not send this message as an attack upon our friend. Instead, pure concern moves me to broach the subject with one who knew him at Vienna, and who was there to see his pride when His Imperial Majesty your brother conferred upon him his current prestigious command.
There never was a more courageous soldier than Ferenc. I say without fear of contradiction that of all who secured Esztergom for us, none played a greater role than he. These last few years, however, I have felt as though a different man sometimes watches me from his eyes. Since even before the war began, a strange distance has attached itself to him. He has joined less and less in the merriment of camp life. Small matters have brought a temper out in him so that his hand is often raised towards his subordinates. At other times he has shown a curious fear of things that should be of no account to a bold warrior: rats and other vermin, darkness, the sudden rise of mist. Most of all he seldom speaks of his wife, but when he does there is a tremble in his voice and he will not meet my eyes, as though terrified by her. His visits home are brief, no more time than it takes to warm the marital bed and then be gone, and I sometimes think the joy he takes in battle compensates him for what he cannot derive from his home.
What troubles me greatly is a habit that has been sporadic with him for some years, but is now almost nightly. When all are abed, as I have seen and his servants have confirmed to me, he often rises and walks out under the stars, though I cannot say whether he still sleeps or no. There he speaks to himself in such a way that he seems to hold conversation with some other not present. I have stolen close and listened to Ferenc’s words, and the impression is of a man being goaded and instructed to terrible things. I hear him speak of the Turk in terms that go beyond even those of a soldier faced with a vile enemy, and there are curses for his wife, couched in dreadful terms.
When he is properly awake in the morning, he has no apparent recall that any such perambulations occurred, but I have watched him with Turkish prisoners whom he has ordered hung, scourged, drowned, and he has muttered the echo of some words I heard overnight. Before the gates of Esztergom, he had one such impaled upon a stake, placed slow upon it so that the man was a long time dying. He said it was to break the spirit of the defenders, and it may have done so, but it shook me and many Christians who witnessed the act, not least because we many of us recall the practice from our histories, and that it was abandoned because of the reputation of that Wallachian who put it to greatest use.
I fear for our friend, Your Highness. If you have any advice for me, I would gladly welcome your wisdom.
I am your man and ever will be, by the grace of God, which ever have you in his keeping.
Your servant and soldier ever, on this the 28th day of August in Our Lord’s Year 1595
G
VII.
Sárvár, 1596
FERENC HAD NOT cared, after the births of the girls. He had not much wanted to see them, and his visits had been perfunctory. Erzsébet, after the shadow that had been cast over Anna, had sent each girlchild away as swiftly as possible. She had set aside money for them, made arrangements for their nursing and their education, but she had not wanted them near her. And they had thrived, out of her shadow. No mysterious ailments; no pallid, bloodless faces. I have saved them from him, she told herself, and did not consider whether it was her influence they were better rid of.
Anna, Orsolya, Katalin, three scions of the Báthory-Nádasdy line, born to the most powerful and wealthy family in Hungary, to whom even the Habsburgs came cap in hand when their coffers were bare. When grown, they would be the most eligible women in Christendom, ripe for sealing alliances or marrying monarchs. Ferenc barely acknowledged their existence, and as for Erzsébet, she sought a different posterity. Let her name live on in however many generations it might, she planned for a future that she would be there to see.
But the birth of András changed all of that. András, first male heir of the line. She expected to resent him, the moment she purged his tiny form from her body, gritting her teeth and forcing it into the cruel world. When Dorottya declared the babe a boy, she should have sought to have the little shred of flesh destroyed. After all, a boy would inherit, and that made him an enemy for the future, a rival for power over all she had.
But she held him in her arms and felt a connection none of the girls had sparked in her. András. She sounded his name in her head, and who knew what future the boy might have. What might she teach him, in the long, long years of her life? He would be bright and cold like ice, she knew. He would be clever and cruel and follow the long path she set out for him, her eternal viceroy in a world dominated by the name of Báthory.
And Ferenc came back from the wars the moment he heard he had a son. He stood and beamed down at András, who stared back at this huge stranger with measureless courage, and Erzsébet thought, We are almost like a family.
Her happiness lasted two days.
She had been at her studies, marking entries in her day book as one of the new girls trembled, red, on her table. She had some idea about Tartar women—perhaps the fierce warrior spirit of those people might offer improved results—and had procured a few for experimentation. At first she thought the screaming w
as her own work, or some echo in her mind of all the screams that had gone before. Then she recognised the voice: no nameless peasant fit only to be used up for the advancement of Erzsébet’s life and work, but one who had become most dear to her: Dorottya.
Dorottya was old now—fifty years at least, though she had always been strong-framed. When Erzsébet found her at the foot of the nursery stairs, at first she assumed the woman had stumbled. Ilona was already crouching by her teacher’s side, too distressed to be of help, and Erzsébet came within a breath of just storming back to her studies, cursing the clumsiness of menials. Then came Katarína’s bellow from up in the nursery, and she realized that something far worse was at hand.
She took the stairs three at a time, feeling that monster Time dragging at her even as she did so. Slower, weaker, duller. There was blood on the nursery floor.
Katarína, the behemoth, stood before András’s crib. A slash of crimson crossed her face, another her outstretched hand. In one corner of the room, Fickó lay insensible, half his face a purple bruise.
As Erzsébet entered, Ferenc was lashing at Katarína again with his curved cavalryman’s sword. It was an artless stroke, no soldier’s work, and it gashed her upraised arm. The huge woman plainly wanted to get in close, where she could break Ferenc in half like a stick, but fear of the sword kept her where Ferenc could whittle her down.
For a moment Erzsébet tried to make the scene one of her husband defending their child from a servant gone mad, but András was at Katarína’s back. She was spending her blood to keep her mistress’s son from his murderous father.
Erzsébet shouted her husband’s name. She had learned certain ways of speaking, as part of her studies, ways that he might use, to twist the minds of the weak. Ferenc’s mind was weak. He was a barely literate thug good only at killing and siring children, the only virtues noblemen valued. She yelled at him as she would castigate a dog.
When he turned, she saw it gouged into his expression. Another hand was there, another voice in his mind. The hatred writ large there was not Ferenc’s hatred, however hot that might burn, but another’s. His.
The sword came up, and she ignored it, fixing Ferenc with her eyes, pinning him as she sometimes pinned the girls to her table, when they just wouldn’t stay still to be studied. She sent out her will to smother him, to fight over the ravaged terrain of his consciousness. For a moment he was slipping through her grasp, and the bloodied silver of the sword blade approached her, but he was hers. He was part of her dominion, and she did not share. She lunged forwards, gripping his face, gouging him with her nails, speaking his name again and beating in the doors of his mind with her own. There was a moment of infinite fragility and then the sword was ringing on the floor. Ferenc collapsed like an abandoned marionette, his eyes those of an animal, weeping and trembling.
That was how Erzsébet learned that he had no more forgotten her than she had forgotten him.
From the Day Book of Erzsébet Báthory
17th April 1600
The protections are holding. He has been close to Sárvár once more, but András is untouched. I am glad I sent Pál away immediately after his birth. I cannot spare the strength to defend more than one, and András is my firstborn, my heir. Dorottya says there are diminishing returns to the warding blood, just as when I bathe. She says we cannot keep him out forever unless we refine our techniques. I know his temper and I had hoped he would be moved to a rash confrontation that we could take advantage of. It has been four years! But he has all the time in the world.
Materiel for the wards today: 4
Székely, age uncertain circa 16, dark
Székely, age claimed 19, dark
Hungarian, age 12, fair
Jewess, age 23, fair
All our material goes towards protection and I can no longer look in the glass without despair. He is taking my life from me and I must find a way to turn the fight upon him. Materiel is grown hard to come by and the latest batch was of inferior quality. We can no longer rely on peasants offering themselves up for service. Have dispatched Ilona with Katarína and Fickó and some ruffians to go between the villages and seize on any who may be taken. The time for subtlety is past.
Letter from György Thurzó, Esztergom, to Prince Matthias of Habsburg, Governor of Austria, Prague, 1602
Written this 11th day of October 1602
My right worthy and worshipful Prince, I recommend myself, your humble servant, to your good wisdom and patience.
As oft before I do not write on the matter of our victories against the Turk, which you will be more fully informed of by better messengers than I. Once more I write to beg your guidance regarding our friend.
Since the birth of his son and his return from Sárvár, Ferenc has been a man further changed from the stout comrade-in-arms of our youth. He will abide no mention of his family, and when a visiting officer happened to commend himself to Erzsébet Báthory, the very name sent Ferenc into a kind of a fit, so that he was swiftly removed from the view of subordinates to preserve morale. His sickness is now very advanced, and there are times when he is not able to stand or recognise his friends, though thus far the advent of battle has banished any and all symptoms.
I do not believe Ferenc suffers from any infirmity of body. He is like a man at war with himself: a war of factions, ambuscades and treachery. Outside of battle he is beset by timorous moods, weeping, tearing at his hair and shaking. Once the fray is joined he becomes a different man, but still not the man I know. His commands now are such that the most hardened soldiers dread receiving them. After the action against the Turk near Braşov, he had one hundred and thirty-four prisoners impaled alive, as he said, to send a dire warning to those enemy yet under arms, yet he had the army halt for half a day while he sat and watched them die and would brook no interruption. Amongst the men, and as I hear amongst the enemy also, he is called ‘The Black Captain’ for his moods and the punishments he exacts.
For the matter of his wife and the apparent terror she holds for him, I wonder if Your Highness has heard the name of István Magyari, whom we came upon preaching the Protestant faith amongst the followers of the army. He was brought before me after his sermons raised calumny against Ferenc and the Báthory-Nádasdy family. I had intended to run him off with just enough civility to show respect for his place, given that many of the soldiers and officers are of his doctrine, but instead proceeded to a most alarming conversation with the man concerning Erzsébet. He has made wild claims regarding the fate of many scores of young women around those places that Erzsébet has made her own—Sárvár, Csejte and the like—and claims to have taken the testimony of many whose daughters have gone to serve at the castle and never been seen again, or who have had men in Báthory livery come and take their girls by force. What becomes of those taken is uncertain, but Magyari claimed tortures of such cruelty that the Turk himself would pale. Were such accusations made in isolation, I should have had the man whipped or hanged for shaming so noble a name, but I will confess to hearing rumour of similar abomination and I have the shadow of my friend Ferenc to add substance to these thoughts. Magyari claimed that he had written to you, as one always concerned with the health and wellbeing of Hungary and its people, and perhaps you have already read his deposition. I released him, though I cautioned him to stay away from the army lest harm befall him.
Your Highness, I do not know what to make of these things, but I commend them to your greater wisdom. You have previously offered me Ferenc’s command, and say once again I that it would be an unjust reward for one who has served the interests of Hungary and the Empire as determinedly as he. And yet I fear for the man he was, and I fear more the man he has become.
Your servant and soldier ever on this the 11th day of October in Our Lord’s Year 1602
G
Csejte, 1603
SHE COULD HEAR Ferenc’s hoarse, ragged voice from anywhere in this wing of the castle. Most of the time he was roaring out old soldiers’ songs, the words so sl
urred they sounded like another language composed entirely of anger and despair. He left off only to bellow at the servants for more pálinka. The castle would be dry of the brandy long before dawn, and what he would do then was anybody’s guess. He had turned up two days ago, already drunk and in a foul temper, demanding to see his son, looking at Erzsébet as though suspecting she had murdered the boy. Faced with little András, he had broken down weeping and the boy had fled the unshaven, ogrish stranger, screaming hysterically until Ilona had comforted him.
Since then, Ferenc had begun to drink his way through the cellar, seeking freedom from some guilt plainly not soluble in alcohol, and Erzsébet had tried to get on with her preparations.
Fickó had brought news the day before of a girl found bloodless and cold in the woods outside one of the local villages. She had been left where it was easy to find her, and Erzsébet had recognised the message for what it was: a polite indication to the local nobility of a visitor to their domain. She had been preparing for the confrontation ever since the day Ferenc had attacked András, seven years before. She should despair, that the fight was never-ending—that he grew no weaker, even as the years clawed away at her—but she was a Báthory. She applied herself with grim determination and, for a while, it had seemed as though she had succeeded. But they were building on sand. Whether it was a protective ward or their attempts to hold back the ravages of time, their results were always short-lived. The wrinkles returned to the skin. The face in the glass was just as haggard in the morning. All he needed to do was wait.
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